To see drafts in discussion go to: http://www.cd12-plan.net/. The following tables from the N:PLUS report from Housing Section. CCAC expects to close the process in March 2007.
The New York City Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) began as a modest consortium of banks organized to make mortgage loans for the rehabilitation of apartment buildings in a risk pool. From 1975 to 1985, the CPC provided $61.8 million in rehabilitation financing for 155 buildings in Washington Heights. Today about 80 banks and insurance companies are involved as sponsors. Since its founding in 1974 CPC has financed more than 120,000 affordable housing units, investing over $5 billion. The point made here: CPC needs to do this again for new ten-year commitment and comparable financing of roughly $320 million.
The housing stabilization achieved in Washington Heights through the loans and improvements to occupied buildings included rent restructuring and stabilization to make the financings possible. It brought the area to the point where projects without substantial subsidies, incentives, and benefits were included in the mix. Just 30 years later, the moderate rehabilitation question becomes an important part of this community’s history once again. Is the same partnership available today? Can new or equally effective programs bring the level of financial restructuring expertise to a community that continues to need it?
To establish a sense of the geographic distribution buildings with a significant number of violations are mapped with violations over 200 and over 500. The total comes to 246 buildings with serious violations based on HPD Anti-Abandonment Unit figures. Furthermore, the 2000 Census finds Upper Manhattan’s housing to be in worse condition when compared to neighborhoods throughout New York City. [i]
Effective housing policy starts with a sense of on-the-ground opportunity for development and preservation. The land use/building condition survey, combined with review of data on building type, age, housing violations, incomes and “rent-burden” yielded the following overall observations on the prospects for preserving housing affordability in CD12.
CD12 maintains a high-grade housing stock that is physically capable of withstanding the stress of rehabilitation. The extensive bulk (square feet) makes replacement unlikely, given the current zoning. In effect, the 1961 zoning to R7-2 for most of the district was a down zone.
The rise in building code violations and complaint over the last five years is alarming. The issues are the quality of maintenance and management of the existing stock--and maintaining it as affordable.
The pre-war housing stock provides large and flexible apartment layouts that facilitate extended family, family friend, and guest living arrangements. Shared costs from food to rent, to childcare and small business development are effective means to survival that promote savings and the eventual building up of investment capital. CD12’s dense but flexible and affordable housing stock is therefore a wellspring for the social and economic success of newcomers.
The Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) measures the cost of operating a multi-unit apartment building in significant detail. As the decisions are now critical, an independent review of methods is long overdue. Nevertheless, a growing share of households (about 25%) experiences a severe rent burden[ii] in CD12. A key to preservation will be strong
efforts to bring income up either directly, or through income supplements such as food stamps, expanded rent subsidies, and 100% utilization of the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Advocate for methods to reduce the margin of cost to profit (or investor risk) by turning to rehabilitation as a source of sustainable affordable housing. This policy is daunting only for the fact that renovation is less predictable than new construction. Often a gap exists between the costs of renovation and the resources available to finance renovation. Strict
building codes may impose additional costs by requiring new construction building standards. Other regulatory barriers that may make a project complicated include historic preservation regulations, environmental clearance, access provisions, citizen opposition, and conflicting codes - such as building code vs. fire code, making approval processes lengthy.
For years, the public market defined housing affordability as a charitable function within a competitive market. The cost of privately rented housing moves upward based on competition in the market and changes in operating costs and regulatory practices including the expiration of incentives. On the other hand, the rent of other affordable housing that is embedded in the private stock will continue to move up based on the ability of the household to pay up to a point, beyond which it becomes unadvisable.
Let us be clear, a person earning $125,000 would pay $3,000 a month using the 30% of income as the housing affordability figure. But, he knows he can shop for a wide range of vacant, readily available apartments in Manhattan’s upper income market at $2,500. Opting for “affordable housing privileges” is not in his financial interest. The point is there are many neighborhoods where the market serves us well. But it is also a force that goes against the idea that we can all live together in that neighborhood (such as in CD12) with dignity regardless of our income. Imagine the reverse: 60% to 80% of the housing units are “means tested”, but it is built attractive enough to attract 20% to 40% eager to pay whatever the market would demand.
N: PLUS AlegrÃa de Vida Project
Washington Heights and Inwood Community Board will monitor Columbia University’s Westside ambitions, define its personal version of New York’s affordable housing crisis, and nervously seek zoning protections through Inclusionary Zoning and Quality Housing Programs. All of this will be found in the formal release of a 300 page description dubbed, N:PLUS released in April 2007.
N:PLUS stands for Neighborhood Planning and Land Use Study. Its authors define it as a report to the community. While large in total, N:PLUS is designed as digital baseline. It seeks to attract a constituency for planning. It seeks the creation of a more lively board, one more interested in a new urban vision and “vida” than the bogged down drudgery of being the first rung on the public process ladder. This board wants to shred the sinking feeling that a con is in play all of the time. True or not, it is still a feeling. Having their own plan will, if nothing else, produce a basis for comparisons.
Based on research completed to date, the report makes thirty recommendations and describes eighteen “best practices” most useful to a volunteer group of community members. That is what is on the table now, but the digital component is busy seeking challenges to its own report. The facts are friendly; it is what they mean that creates dissemblers in the debate.
The board has a skeleton staff of three and a barebones budget of $200,000 the majority of which goes for meeting space, baseline operations, and the salary and benefits of its District Manager. This budget is the lowest per capita in the city.
From the viewpoint of Washington Heights or Inwood, Columbia University may seem too far away. How could changes all the way down past City College into the 120s produce problems this far uptown? This area is 155th Street through the 200s, so perhaps, the community is right. Columbia’s relationship with the residential community’s of Morningside and Hamilton Heights, Hamilton Grange, Manhattanville and even St. Nicholas Terrace is a more like symbol of bad PR than a tangible threat. Then again, Columbia did drop its name from the 8 million square foot medical complex now modestly marketed as New York Presbyterian Hospital. The supposition has therefore become “better safe than sorry” in serving what some are now calling “upstate” Manhattan.
[i] The 2000 Census measures affordability and quality: (1) lacking complete plumbing facilities, (2) lacking complete kitchen facilities, (3) with 1.01 or more occupants per room, (4) selected monthly owner costs as a percentage of household income in 1999 greater than 30 percent, and (5) gross rent as a percentage of household income in 1999 greater than 30 percent.
[ii] On the rental side of the market, affordability pressures clearly grew. The median monthly contract rent increased from $831 to $900 (after adjusting for inflation), and the median share of income spent on rent by New York City renters (the median rent burden) rose from 28.6 percent in 2002 to 31.2 percent in 2005. These numbers suggest that rents represent a significant strain for many households, especially those at the low end of the income spectrum who are not fortunate enough to live in subsidized housing. Among unsubsidized, low-income renters, the median share of income spent on rent rose to over 50 percent in 2005, up from 43.9 percent in 2002. Surprisingly, perhaps, the share of unsubsidized, low-income renter households that live in severely crowded housing actually fell during this period from 5.3 percent in 2002 to 4.8 percent in 2005. (State of City 2005, Furman Center)
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